Catherine Portuges and Film Studies

     Amherst, MA – Catherine Portuges, a French professor, arrived here at the University of Massachusetts initially focused on teaching within the Women’s Studies. Currently, she teaches courses entitled Cinema and Psyche and French Film as well as graduate level seminar in Comparative Literature. However, back in 1991, the University of Massachusetts had no structure for its various classes that not only incorporated film into their syllabus, but made films the focal point through which information could be disseminated.  Therefore, Ms. Portuges undertook the responsibility of developing an office wherein film studies has grown into an interdepartmental certificate program with over twenty faculty members over fifteen distinct departments enrolling over 300 students.   Not only is the program responsible for coordinating classes here at the University of Massachusetts but also coordinating classes within the five college consortium. 

     Also, every April, the Film Studies Department presents the showpiece of its hard work, in the form of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival. Ms. Portuges realized that not only was this campus in need of a vehicle to showcase international films but more importantly, that there was an eager audience yearning for the opportunity to experience these types of films.  Each year since 1993, the MMFF has brought a diverse range of films pertaining to a designated theme, which serves as the intrinsic link between the arts and politics.   This coming April, the 16th annual MMFF will present films under the theme of “Beyond the Wall,” signifying the progression of filmmaking in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall.   Ms. Portuges is a world traveler who diligently attends film festivals in search of movies to screen at the MMFF.  She explains the process of determining the theme, coupled with process of selecting films for the film festival as a symbiotic relationship wherein each factor is responsible for determining the other. 

     Beyond her work as curator of the MMFF, Ms. Portuges has just finished co-editing a book entitled, Cinemas in Transition: Post-communism in East-Central Europe.   This book explores the very theme of this year’s film festival in that it analyzes the evolution of filmmaking twenty years after severing of the control of both state support and state censorship.